Return of the lost soldier
by canikostar99
Summary: "Is this truly how far he will go in his lust for power? To try and resurrect his armies?" "Yes, but it may be worse than that. He may go as far as to try to recreate the cube." "The cube is older than Cybertron itself. There is no way he could" "He has found a new power. One that may make it possible. And now, he drags a new planet and its people into the crossfire."
1. Prologue Jazz

_**Return of the lost soldier**_

_**AN: Before anyone kills me for not updating in like a year let me just point out, *carefully takes deep breath* I spent the entire school year traumatized by the number of first person accounts of genocides in the 10th grade reading curriculum. After the research project about genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Ethiopia, World War II, and terrorist actions in Ireland and Tiananmen Square, I just really need to vent and Sonic is a willing victim. I know I keep trying to promise more constant updates, but I really can't put anything fluffy out without slaughtering said furries and everyone they might know. It starts off just trasformers so Sonic fans be patient.**_

_**So I tried on some transformers terminology for size. Experts can correct my usage and spelling. It helps my case.**_

**The Void**

_Primus fraggit all to the pit. I was on the Matrix's doorstep, making small talk with the Great Primes for the allspark's sake. What did the First Prime mean by "You weren't supposed to die" anyway? Everyone who went into the Well of Sparks were there because it was their time. Right? There shouldn't be any "weren't supposed to die"'s. _

A small silver cybertronian with a blue visor and faded Autobot insignia leaned against a wall of his conscience, one of the many such walls created by hundreds of offlined cybertronians trapped in the imitation void, while he ranted at his fate. He, Jazz, Second in Command of the Autobots, was trapped in some holding field with a bunch of crazed bots using their renewed sight and hearing to blast each other into nonexistence._ What in the pit did Soundwave do to lock up the void like this? He's turned it from a silent world at the edge of the Well to hell's waiting room turned war-zone._ At the moment, Jazz was willing to use this strange field's rules to afford him a rest and time to think. This world was based entirely on the extent of the recipient's conscious. Decepticons could shoot as much as they want and not hit anything unless someone thought they were hit. If he shuttered his optics and tuned down his audio receptors so the shots sounded far away, he wouldn't be hit. He would be as immune to them as though he had a force field, but he dare not loose conscience. Loosing conscience would be like dying a second time with no chance of an after life. The young once autobot he tried to help proved that to him. Hornet, an inexperienced front liner, was barely upgraded past his youngling model. He was a lot like Bumblebee, sporting the same friendly nature and bravery, and they shared the same open honesty that made it so hard for him to pretend no one was close. It was the same honesty that made him believe that a shot fired wide hit home, that condemned him with the heavy blow to the back, that convinced him that the injury must exist and could not be ignored, and it was that same honesty that caused him to fade into oblivion when he fell into stasis lock. Jazz unshuttered his optics to stare up at the field's dimly glowing sky, or more like a tall dome ceiling, which lit the void in gold and flashes of red. Every bot trapped here could see the hazy, dim light, but only he could see beyond it. Only he could see through the haze and into the decepticon base, where the experiments took place. Humans screaming as their bodies were put through torture beyond what any government throughout history has imagined. Each, one by one, beaten and electrocuted until they could no longer fight back, injected with energon repeatedly over a number of days while being exposed to some energy source he could only assume is radioactive, and if they still cling to life after all of this they are biopsied alive to look for whatever it is Megatron wants. Jazz grimaced and shuttered his optics quickly as one of a few unlucky survivors from the injections, a young woman, is dragged towards Odd job's and Knock out's medbay. _Optimu_s_, help them. And Primus, save us all._


	2. Chapter 1 Knock-out

_**So it's been suggested I need to define my terms more, list time!**_

_**Energon- Food, blood? It's like cars and gas where it's the fuel and also considered the blood, doesn't run without it. Technically one bot could siphen off another bot's lines, but it's considered really barbaric, like cannibalism.**_

_**Great primes- The first 6 Primes, or leaders, who sacrificed themselves to stop their 7th brother from destroying Earth 2.5 million years before the movie. **_

_**Matrix- This was brought up in the second movie. The Great Primes were guarding it from their brother and their sparks became bound to it even in the afterlife. It's like heaven or the judgment place of the afterlife. Not completely like the well of sparks or void due to the former being afterlife in general and the later being the ghost room/waiting area.**_

_**Pit- If the Matrix is above the pit is bellow. **_

_**Allspark- showed up in the first movie as the creator of life for any planet it resides on. Destroyed at the end of the movie, in the same fight as Jazz's death. **_

_**Cybertronian- Autonomous robotic organisms from planet Cybertron. Two factions, Autobot and Decepticon, at war. Decepticons work towards universal domination and enslavement. Autobots are peacekeepers. **_

_**Primus- god of cybertron.**_

_**I did use some anatomy stuff. Just think car/computer combo thing. pump is heart, vents are lungs, fuel line/energon lines is blood I think (gas and cars, both life blood and food)**_

_**I did start this at 4 am after a full night not sleeping. Turns out I've been staying up past 1 and waking at 4 on a regular bases, so I'm a little sleep deprived.**_

**The Decepticon Med-bay**

Knock out exvented in annoyance, leaning near the door frame refueling with a cube of energon. _Odd job enjoys cutting up humans too much. Maybe it was seeing the autobots' organic pet squeal like a day old sparkling when Odd Job started talking about cutting open his head. I really don't understand why I'm involved with these experiments of his. The squishy organics are far to messy for my tastes. Besides, I have much more interesting things I would rather do._

The mech let his impassive gaze move past Odd Job and the screaming, rust colored mess he was making to the new vehicle mode and paint scheme he wanted to try. The design is flawless, slopping curves holding unbridled speed, in a glorious, fiery red. Knock Out snapped his attention back to the odd doctor's victi-_patient_ as it's screams became louder and shriller. _Do these things ever shut up? Oh. Never mind, he offlined it._

Knock out relaxed back against the wall and lifted his cube to his lip plates, watching Odd Job finish extracting the reward of the experiment. Three light blue crystal were pulled out of the fleshy femme's torso and placed carefully in a bowl filled with similar stones. The passive disinterest turned to disgust as he observed dark rust colored smears from the leaking human fluids that covered most of the glittering blue surfaces. Part of his processor shoved his system warnings to refuel aside as he left his own cube of untainted energon on a nearby berth.

The creature Starscream and his team discovered and the energy radiating from it, that is what's causing this phenomenon. Some little black and red furry thing half the size of a human was found radiating a massive amount of energy, and Starscream was preening himself for bringing it back to Lord Megatron right up until the energon in his systems reacted enough for him to notice and go into near stasis. Hence, why he is sitting in a quarantined cell of the brig until his repair systems didn't have to fight to prevent crystallized energon lines. The creature was locked up with a force field as extra security to prevent exposure until they could figure out what to do with it, and then one of Odd Job's tests on the crystallized energon sparked, quite literally, the idea of being able reincarnate the offlined sparks of decepticon soldiers into new bodies.

Honestly, he didn't understand most of what Odd Job was rambling about, but he understood it would take gathering lots of the crystals to resurrect an effective army as Megatron wished, with five crystals for each intact and sane reincarnation. But because cybertronian repair systems destroyed the hardened energon naturally, they had to use the tiny fleshy humans to create the crystals. After all, nothing in the human's auto repair system breaks down blockage or hardening debris. That's why so many offline from pump failures.

"Zis iz no good. Zis patient, it produced so few before it'z offlining. I must have another." _The Accent Odd Job chose coming to this planet really suites the earth image of the mad doctor. What was it, French, German? _The miniature decepticon medical officer was already on the comm lines demanding another patient, earning a number of groans and comments about saw-happy docs on the open comm.

Knock-out was perfectly happy ignoring Odd Job as the doctor disposed of the cooling meat sack and went about cleaning the berth for another subject. He just wanted to take a break long enough to redo his vehicle mode and paint, maybe with ghosted flames, and then get waxed, buffed, and polished until it shines. Showing off the new sleek design and speed as he cracks some autobot heads will be fun, but it will have to wait. The returning stray process was shut down as alarms in the base went off, leaving Knock-out, once again, highly annoyed with the incompetence shown by most of the decepticons. _Let the idiots do their jobs. They received orders to guard the Medbay._

Not having much else to do, he joined Odd Job in setting up the berth and tools needed, refusing to do anything handling the leaked fluids that would most likely stain his paint. _The humans call it blood. What a fittingly drab word for the substance._

"**Hey, Docs. We found you another patient already. One of the furry creatures from across the space bridge tried to break in on their own. Unfortunately, it's got a lot of internal system damage. It wandered into the brig and we found it while Starscream was trying to squish it. You wouldn't believe it, but the little critter actually snapped his knee-joint. Still got a lot of fight in it too, with the damage to its vent systems and all."** The furry creatures. They were on another little planet like Earth, just across a dimension. A space bridge barely reached it, but the risk of drawing attention with the bridge was balanced by the benefits of using them for the crystal collection instead of humans. Living in the same dimension as the energy meant they were more tolerant to it and could create larger crystals before reaching system failure, despite most being half the size of a human. He could see Odd Job ready to blow a gasket at having one of his rarer, more precious subjects damaged before the experiment. Knock-out had the sense to tune down his audios before the rant started.

"**You, glitches! I told you not to break the internal systems. You can snap its limbs, but I need the internal systems functional to make the crystals!" **The meager protests were drowned out by the angry rant which continued for a while longer. When the small decepticon was sufficiently reassured the patient was no longer being damaged and ready to be experimented on, he turned on Knock-out with a returning mad glint.

"Knock-out get another syringe of energon ready. We have a patient." Odd Job scurried off with all the sparkling like excitement and speed his insectoid, six legged body could muster. Knock-out stared after the bot in a deadpan, letting out an ex-vent as no further instructions were forth-coming.

"I guess I won't be getting that break."

_**Just as a rough hinter of what they are doing, think someone was injected with gasoline and it was set on fire. That's your Energon/ chaos energy combo. Although gas doesn't do the whole crystallizing thing. That was actually something I made up.**_


	3. Chapter 2 Sonic

**I wasn't sure whether I wanted to archy or plain Sonic x so I'm mixing it all. (My normal brain method.) Archy- verse is kind of Sonic's back story with elaboration and detail adding from my wonderous imagination. Please read and review. I hoard reviews like chocolate coins with gold tinfoil wrappers each is to be taken with me into hiding and have their sweetness savored for as long as possible before I try to put the wrapping back in it's previous shape.**

**Sonic's P.O.V. The Decepticon Base**

_What kind of place is this? I thought I was coming in to break up another one of Egghead's plans gone wrong, but these robots are more capable of emotions and free thought than the AIs Eggman builds for his robots. I've seen Bo-kun get upset and wail at points if he got dirty or injured, but it wasn't an actual cry of pain like that just was. It's disconcerting, knowing these are living things made of metal and that they feel pain. I need to find the people from missing person's, but I don't want to hurt or kill anyone._

A blue hedgehog zigzagged from cover to cover, glancing quickly around corners to look for signs of more robotic soldiers. Sonic stopped and pressed himself against a wall as more of them passed. They were hard to miss, humanoid structures as big as Eggman's E-99 with red eyes instead of a glass control room and nearly twice as much firepower, but they surprised him once already with their ability to disguise themselves as vehicles and other inanimate objects. He was lucky that by comparison he was smaller than an insect and practically invisible with his speed as long as they weren't looking for him. He did not want another case like the SUV that started shooting at him when he hid behind it.

At the moment, he was trying to avoid fighting and risking injury to them or himself. Killing is not his thing and probably never would be, even in cases of defense. Even fighting the Metarex to save the galaxy was a hard decision to make, knowing that winning would kill the last of the Metarex's people and losing would kill everyone else in the galaxy.

He looked up from where he was just about wedged in an oversized seam in the wall and watched the couple of robots pass through the intersection and take a turn into a door nearby. Seeing no one else in the hallway he dashed to the other side of the intersection just in time to hear the door open again and the two robots return to the intersection with a large metal bin. The two robots turned right at the intersection, into the hall where Sonic was previously, leaving Sonic alone with his thoughts again, but not before he noticed what was hanging off the side of the bin.

Sonic was steeling himself, so as not to give himself away from retching at what he saw. Hanging at an awkward angle, and suffering what could only be a dislocated shoulder, was a woman's arm. It was covered in drying blood and the wrist was bruised and rubbed raw from being restrained. Her wedding band still sat in its proper place and her nails were decorated in a bright pink polish, but the arm was limp and paling to expose dark bruises.

Sonic watched them go down the hall he was coming from, before turning a right as well to investigate the room they came out of. He was two doors down from his intended target, wedged half way into the seam of a door frame, trying to find a way past two robot guards and an automatic door when the alarms system went off.

"_Intruders have infiltrated the Nemesis. I repeat. Intruders have infiltrated the Nemesis."_

"Oh, great. I guess leaving the SUV guy in the middle of the floor was kind of my fault, though." He darted down a side corridor while he still had a second of distraction from the noise. After all, facing an army of upgraded E-99 is sure to end badly. Stopping at a turn, he noticed a gap in the floor where a platform had risen well above his head, like an elevator.

"Going down." He dropped passed three levels before reaching the bottom and using his favored spin-dash to break his fall.

On the bottom floor, the hallways were no less spotless than elsewhere on the base, but the lack of security and foot traffic identified this as the farthest from the problem's core. One or two bots in cells looked close to turning off, or however they fell asleep, labeling the dimly lit area he was in as some sort of dungeon.

Sonic slipped between the bars of a shadowy cell that appeared vacant, sighing at the new delay but finding it better to wait out the drama than get squished in the chaos. A familiar quiet mechanical sound warned him something was off in the huge cell expanse behind him, but the sense of deja vu escaped him momentarily. When he turned to inspect his hiding place fully, he was met with a pair of red eyes blazing in white hot fury.

"Shit."


End file.
